John Murray | Abstract painter

John Francis Murray is an American painter, known for working in the Abstract style. His subject matter includes figure, landscape, still-life and portraiture. Inspired by the classical masters as a boy, his traditional training and artistic development has lead to work of quality. His paintings carry an appealing sense of clarity and color.

As a classically trained artist, Murray's choice for subject matter revolves around figure, still-life, portrait and landscape. His work is a combination of traditional subject matter, infused with bold brushwork and contemporary compositions.

Vincent Van Gogh | In the springtime a bird in a cage, 1880

Vincent van Gogh letter to Theo van Gogh, Cuesmes, 24 June 1880:

In the springtime a bird in a cage knows very well that there’s something he’d be good for; he feels very clearly that there’s something to be done but he can’t do it; what it is he can’t clearly remember, and he has vague ideas and says to himself, "the others are building their nests and making their little ones and raising the brood", and he bangs his head against the bars of his cage.

And then the cage stays there and the bird is mad with suffering. "Look, there’s an idler", says another passing bird - "that fellow’s a sort of man of leisure".

Loren D. Adams, 1945 | Surrealist painter

American Loren D. Adams, Jr. was born in Linton, Indiana.

He developed a profound interest in painting at the age of nine years old. One of these very early original Art-works found it's way into a major retrospective exhibition at the prestigious R.W. Norton Art Gallery, a Museum of Early American, European and Contemporary Fine Art in Shreveport, Louisiana in February of 1979.

His first public exhibit was at the Roseville Museum, Roseville, California in 1967. This was the same year he quit his day job as an emergency room L.P.N. to devote full time to his Art. The young Artist began to chase after his dream to become a Master.

Holly Sierra | Magic realism painter

Whether wandering through the forest or exploring an ancient crumbling castle, Holly Sierra finds inspiration all around her.

Holly has been drawn to painting things ‘mystical and magical’ for as long as she can remember.

After her fine art education at SUNY Purchase in NY, the next decade found Holly living and traveling extensively in Asia.

She now blends her marvelous multicultural memories with themes that influence and fascinate her today.

Roger Suraud | Symbolist painter

French painter and sculptor Roger Suraud (1938-2016) was born in Saint-Étienne.

The Suraud's painting are a grand spectacle where music travels with Sculpture and Architecture.

Suraud is represented in many exposures and international living rooms: Paris, Genève, Monaco, Lyon, Bordeaux, Saint-Tropez.

Federico García Lorca | Potessero le mie mani sfogliare la luna

Pronunzio il tuo nome

nelle notti scure,

quando sorgono gli astri

per bere dalla luna

e dormono le frasche

delle macchie occulte.

Leon Wyczolkowski

Pablo Neruda | In Te la terra / In you the Earth

Marc Chagall, 1927

Piccola

rosa,

rosa piccina,

a volte,

minuta e nuda,

sembra

Felice Casorati | Magic Realism painter

Born in Novara, Felice Casorati (1883-1963) spent his formative years in Padua, where he developed an interest in music and literature.

He began to paint in 1902, and read law at the University of Padua, graduating in 1906, while frequenting the studio of Giovanni Viannello (1873-1926).

Casorati's early paintings were in the symbolist mode of the Vienna Secession.

His adherence to this style was strengthened by seeing Klimt's installation at the 1910 Venice Biennale, where he met the Austrian painter.

Leonardo da Vinci | Pittore che disputa col poeta

Trattato della Pittura - Parte prima /14

Qual poeta con parole ti metterà innanzi, o amante, la vera effigie della tua idea con tanta verità, qual farà il pittore?

Quale sarà quello che ti dimostrerà i siti de' fiumi, boschi, valli e campagne, dove si rappresentino i tuoi passati piaceri, con più verità del pittore?

Marty Bell | Vintage style painter

With her passion for beauty, color and style, American painter Marty Bell [1931-2003] was a prolific and influential artist. Her work has been internationally collected and she enjoyed the respect of both her peers and fine art collectors.
In her lifetime, Marty painted more than 3,000 oil paintings ranging from old English cottages and California landscapes to impressionistic pieces and colorful still lifes.

Leon Richman ~ Figurative sculptor

Beginning in medium to large-scale marble figures, his passion to explore the beauty of the human form in all dimensions soon led him to a more pliable medium, allowing more freedom in the creative process. The result has been an inspired body of work, each piece possessing its own unique spirit and personality.
Leon Richman is a California artist with a formal education from the renowned Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and years of practical experience in the field of commercial art, but his soul and passion have always been deeply rooted in the finer arts. He has almost as many years experience in drawing and painting as he’s been living and breathing. Now he has directed his creative ambitions towards the art of sculpture.
Chosen to study under the tutelage of the internationally acclaimed sculptor Richard MacDonald, Leon Richman has since become even more skillful at the physical interpretation of the human spirit, not settling for a simple duplication of a posing body, but instilling his sculptures with the same passion he feels in their creation.

Eva Gonzalès | Les grandes dames of Impressionism

Eva Gonzalès (1849-1883) was a French Impressionist painter.

She was one of the four most notable female Impressionists in the nineteenth century, along with Mary Cassatt (1844-1926), Berthe Morisot (1841-95) and Marie Bracquemond (1840-1916).

Gonzalès began her professional training and took lessons in drawing in 1865, from the society portraitist Charles Chaplin, who was also Mary Cassatt's teacher.

Martin Johnson Heade and the Hudson River School

Art historians have come to disagree with the common view that Martin Johnson Heade (-1819-1904) is a Hudson River School painter, a view given wide currency by Heade's inclusion in a landmark exhibition of Hudson River School landscapes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1987.

The leading Heade scholar and author of Heade's catalogue raisonne, Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., wrote some years after the 1987 Hudson River School exhibition that "...other scholars-myself included-have increasingly come to doubt that Heade is most usefully seen as standing within that school".

Albert Carrier-Belleuse | Chryselephantine sculpture

Carrier-Belleuse is the name used by this sculptor -born Carrier de Belleuse- on his mature pieces, after initially signing works "A. Carrier". His career began firmly in the applied arts, with his apprenticeship at thirteen to a Parisian ciseleur today known as Bauchery (or Beauchery), and he did subsequent work for Jacques-Henri Fauconnier and Fannière Frères. His formal education took place at the Petite Ecole - chosen after an unhappy stint at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1840 under the direction of David d'Angers, his official master.

While at the Petite Ecole in the 1840s, Carrier-Belleuse began his lifelong practice of providing commercial houses with models for edition, as statuettes or as ornament for functional pieces. Around 1850, the sculptor moved to England as a designer for Minton China Works, at Stoke-upon-Trent, as well as for Wedgewood, Coalbrookdale Ironworks, and Graham Jackson furniture makers.

Even after returning to Paris in 1855, he continued to send models to British firms throughout his life.

He began to garner acclaim as a fine-arts sculptor after ten years of showing in the Salon, beginning with two portrait medallions in 1850 and a flurry of busts and groups with mythological or historical subjects between 1857-1861, the latter of which earned him a third-class medal.

Catherine Calcagni | Ed intanto fuori piove..

Assorta nella penombra

delle pagine gialle della mia vita

mi siedo con l'abbandono

con le mani raccolgo il vuoto

e mi conforta la pena

non guardo fuori...

sento solo....confesso

il rigurgito fuso delle mie angosce

eppur..... c'era il sole

Jeremy Mann

The fountain of the Four Rivers / La Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, 1651

Quattro enormi allegorie sedute in pose contrastanti agli angoli delle rocce in marmo bianco che rappresentano i maggiori fiumi di ciascuno dei quattro continenti noti, secondo le cognizioni geografiche del XVII secolo:

Il Danubio per l'Europa, scolpito da Antonio Raggi;

Il Gange per l'Asia di Claude Poussin;

Il Rio della Plata per l'America di Francesco Baratta;

Il Nilo per l'Africa di Antonio Fancelli.

Will Barnet | Abstract painter

American painter and printmaker Will Barnet (1911-2012) has lived through every major artistic school in modern American art.

He can remember watching John Singer Sergent paint murals on the ceiling of the Boston Public Library in the 1920s, and being the printmaker in New York for Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco.

He remembers the explosion of Abstract Expressionism that would come to define the so-called New York School of artists.

Alda Merini / Michelangelo | Bambino..

Bambino,

se trovi l'aquilone della tua fantasia

legalo con l'intelligenza del cuore.

Vedrai sorgere giardini incantati

e tua madre diventerà una pianta

che ti coprirà con le sue foglie.

Michelangelo Buonarroti | La Madonna di Bruges 1503-1505

Edgar Allan Poe | Il Corvo, la poesia illustrata da Manet

Il Corvo - The Raven - ed altre poesie è una raccolta di poesie scritte da Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), scrittore, poeta, critico letterario, giornalista, editore, storyteller e saggista statunitense, considerato tra le figure più importanti della letteratura americana, inventore del racconto poliziesco, della letteratura horror e del giallo psicologico, finisce per diventare anche uno dei rappresentanti maggiori del racconto gotico.

Il Corvo fu pubblicato per la prima volta il 29 gennaio 1845, sul New York Evening Mirror.

Édouard Manet 1832-1883 | Illustration for The Rave by Edgar Allan Poe

Richard Baxter, 1966

Richard Baxter is an Australian painter, photographer and digital artist.

These three aspects of visual art constantly interweave for me, and I don't like to create borders between them as they all enhance each other in different ways.

The main, simple message in all my recent work is that life is joyous and explosive, here and now in the present, amidst the ordinary, amongst the flowers and the garbage.

Yannick Bouchard, 1982 | Surrealist / Symbolist painter

I am not claiming myself as a "surrealist artist", but my art is undeniably marked by their influence.

I was also very impressed by some notable fantasy artists, as well as erotic artists; the way they depict beauty and sensuality, and how they bring grandiose imaginary worlds to life.
Overall, my paintings are more or less a mixture of all those types; surrealism, fantasy with a touch of symbolism and even sometimes macabre.

But most of all, my paintings are images resulting of my inner thoughts and feelings; they are the expression of my love for the human body, the inspiring curves of femininity, as well as the superphysical side of the human mind, the mystical and the magical, or just very simple little things, like textures, colors and nature.

They are not intellectual pieces. They don't depict sophisticated and complicated opinions and cryptic theories.

Their essence is to stimulate the imagination and guide viewers where only they want to go. Mostly, I paint for myself; I paint what I want, I paint what I like, what moves me, what I feel and what I am.

Momix Ballet

Conosciuta nel mondo intero per le sue opere di eccezionale inventiva e bellezza, Momix è una compagnia di ballerini, diretta dall'americano Moses Pendleton. Sin dalla fondazione ha acquisito grande notorietà per la sua capacità di evocare un mondo di immagini surreali utilizzando il corpo, costumi, attrezzi, luci e giochi d’ombra.

The Vigeland Sculpture Park

Il Parco delle sculture di Vigeland, un'area di circa 320 ettari, si trova all'interno del Frognerparken di Oslo, l'antica Kristiania, in periferia della capitale norvegese.
E' dedicata all'esposizione permanente di sculture, bassorilievi e opere in ferro battuto dell'artista norvegese Gustav Vigeland. Disseminate nel Parco Vigeland oltre 200 sculture che ritraggono scene di vita quotidiana.

Il tema di fondo dell'intero parco, il ciclo della vita, dalla nascita e della morte, si articola in cinque aree: Il Cancello, Il Ponte, La Fontana, La Terrazza del Monolite e la Ruota della Vita.
Tutti i sentieri del Parco Vigeland portano all’obelisco, monolite granitico si staglia in cielo per 17 metri, con scolpiti 121 corpi avvinghiati. Vigeland si occupò anche del design e della progettazione architettonica del parco.

Mark Mawson | Conceptual photographer

Mark Mawson is a London based photographer with 25 years experience of producing creative and inspiring images.

He specialises in shooting liquids and his colourful liquid work, titled "Aqueous", has become very well known and collectable. An Aqueous video was projected onto the walls of Buckingham Palace for The Queen's diamond jubilee concert.

Mark also enjoys shooting underwater fashion and beauty and his non commissioned personal work shows a love of atmospheric, cinematic work.

His work is held in many private collections around the world.

Ronit Baranga, 1973 | Surrealist sculptor

An Israeli artist with a head full of memories. Memories that might come from childhood, confronting the hands of an adult? An art that creates mysterious characters, images of women hiding behind their masks, or objects that have a life of themselves, and some human presence.

Miriana Mitrovich | Abstract photographer

Miriana Mitrovich is Bulgarian-born Canadian artist, born in Sofia. As a daughter of a ballerina and a sculptor, she was enrolled in a classical ballet and piano lessons by the age of six and sculpting portraiture under the guidance of her father. At the age of ten, she was accepted as one of twenty-eight children from across the country into a nine-year program at the National Ballet School in Sofia.

La Galleria degli Uffizi di Firenze

La Galleria degli Uffizi, una imponente ed armoniosa struttura del Cinquecento fiorentino, uno dei musei più conosciuti al mondo, è sito nel Piazzale degli Uffizi a Firenze.

Fù realizzata dall'architetto Giorgio Vasari su disposizione di Cosimo I, il quale volle riunire tutti gli uffici amministrativi della città in un solo grande edificio.

La costruzione del palazzo iniziò nel 1560 per terminare nel 1580, quando Giorgio Vasari era già morto.

L’opera fu portata a termine dagli architetti Alfonso Parigi e Bernardo Buontalenti, che mantennero il disegno originale.

Piazza della Signoria - Fontana del Neptune

Concerto di Capodanno di Vienna, 2014

La Filarmonica di Vienna ha invitato a Daniel Barenboim per guidare il Concerto di Capodanno del 2014. Questo è un riconoscimento a 25 anni di collaborazione musicale dell’orchestra col Direttore Generale Musicale dell’Opera di Stato Berlinese, qui ha diritto il suo premier Concerto di Capodanno con la Filarmonica di Vienna nel 2009, e per tutti gli apporti artistici, in aggiunta al riconoscimento mondiale del suo coraggio personale per costruire dei ponti e riconciliare quello ch’è irreconciliabile.

Tanti auguri di Buon 2014 !

Il giorno nasce con un nuovo raggio di sole,
la vita nasce con un nuovo amore
ed il tuo anno nuovo con i miei migliori auguri.
            Auguri di Buon Anno!

Dal 1939 la Wiener Philarmoniker in concerto

Evento di fama mondiale, perla della tradizione musicale viennese, il Concerto di Capodanno di Vienna rappresenta per gli appassionati del genere un appuntamento irrinunciabile. Trasmesso dalla Goldener Saal -Sala d'Oro- del prestigioso Musikverein, per l’occasione addobbata con opere d’arte floreali di matrice sanremese, l’esibizione dell’orchestra dei filarmonici annovera un pubblico di oltre un miliardo di spettatori e vanta la messa in onda di emittenti televisive di oltre quaranta paesi.

Buon 2014.. Felice Anno Nuovo !!

Libera in cielo i tuoi desideri

perché ad ogni ventata improvvisa tu te ne posa ricordare.

Libera in cielo le tue paure

perché con la sua profondità le mischi con le stelle

e le trasformi in nuovi punti di riferimento per crescere.

Carl Payne, 1969 ~ Figurative sculptor

British sculptor Carl Payne was born in Staffordshire. During his education he studied Figurative Sculpture and began on his first commission in 2000. Since then, Payne has compiled an extensive ensemble of commissions including 'Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross' and 'King George and Queen Mary' which were unveiled by George Best, Bobby Moore and Pele and by Princess Anne at Banbury respectively. Today he has a wide variety of collectors throughout the world.

Payne's works are incredibly lifelike, portraying their subjects flawlessly, the pieces look like they might spring to life at any given moment. Despite a lack of use of colour, the pieces convey a dynamic sense of weight and movement, capturing the viewer in the freeze-frame that his sculptures are trapped in.

Leonardo Bistolfi | Symbolist sculptor

Leonardo Bistolfi (1859-1933) was an Italian sculptor, an important exponent of Italian Symbolism. Bistolfi was born in Casale Monferrato in Piedmont, north-west Italy, to Giovanni Bistolfi, a sculptor in wood and to Angela Amisano.
In 1876 he enrolled in the Brera Art Academy in Milan, where his teacher was Giosuè Argenti. In 1880 he studied under Odoardo Tabacchi at the Accademia Albertina in Turin.

His first works Le lavandaie "The Washerwomen", Tramonto ‘Sunset’, Vespero ‘Evening’, Boaro ‘Cattle-hand’, Gli amanti ‘The Lovers’, executed between 1880 and 1885, show the influence of the Milanese Scapigliatura. In 1882 he sculpted L'Angelo della morte ‘The Angel of Death’ for the Brayda tomb in the Turin cemetery known as the Cimitero Monumentale, and in 1883 he produced a bust of the painter Antonio Fontanesi for the Accademia Albertina: these works show a turn towards Symbolism which the artist was never to abandon.

From this time until 1914 Bistolfi produced many busts, medals and portraits of prominent figures including the Piedmontese painter Lorenzo Delleani, the kings of Italy Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, the criminologist Cesare Lombroso, the writer Edmondo De Amicis, and the publisher and journalist Emilio Treves.
In the early 1890s he was made an honorary member of the Accademia Albertina and became secretary of the Circolo degli Artisti ‘Artists’ Circle’.
In 1892 he began a two-year task of decorating Chapel XVI of the Sacro Monte di Crea, one of the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy which are recognised as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. In 1893 he married Maria Gusberti.

Michel Rauscher, 1957 | Abstract Figurative painter

Michel Rauscher painter and photographer, born in Alsace is a passionate autodidact. Great traveler, he takes his endless curiosity in regions, on land that fascinated him in search of color, light and authenticity, with a predilection for the African continent.
His need for discovery and the interpretation of dreams become sources of inspiration for his painting. It evokes the beauty of the everyday magic of ordinary, the emotion of the moment. He expresses his artistic sensibility with timeless themes, stylized characters in cracked places, evocative and poetic silhouettes causing emotion and enthusiasm.

Jacqueline Osborn | Stories on canvas

British painter* Jacqueline Osborn captures strong, graphic and compelling images in her present series of paintings entitled Moments in Time.
Although Jacqueline has lived in California for half of her life she admits that England will always be home to her and that she is fortunate that she can return fairly often.
Her work communicates precious every-day moments that tell a story of another era, place and generation. Her warm and restrained palette suggests a mood of times gone by - out of reach, elusive moments that are captured on her canvases.

Mary Jane Cross, 1951 | Figurative painter

Born in 1951, American painter* Mary Jane Q. Cross received her formal training at the Worcester Art Museum, in 1970-1973 in a time of Expressionism.

Followed by workshops with Daniel Green and mentoring with Fran Hoyt (student of Vincent Dumond), Mary Jane designed her own curriculum based on the Atelier System, to gain the tools necessary to make her art speak with historic purity, and her own unique voice.

Amy Brown, 1972 | The forest spirit

Born in Bellingham, Washington, Amy Brown is the first Fairy Artist in America.

As a child she spent countless hours drawing fairy princesses at an old, dark wood table in the living room of the beach cabin her parents rented.

The doodling continued throughout her adolescence and at the age of 21 she began to take her art seriously, specializing in painting the fairy realm.

Amy started working with water-colors and found a deep love for the translucent qualities of the paint.

Sculture di ghiaccio e Neve ad Harbin

John Keats / Aldo Luongo | You say you love / Dici di amarmi

Dici di amarmi, ma con una voce

più casta di quella di una suora che canta

il tenue Vespro della sera a se stessa,

mentre suona la campana a festa...

Please, amami sul serio!

You say you love; but with a voice

Chaster than a nun's, who singeth

The soft Vespers to herself

While the chime-bell ringeth -

O love me truly!

Dici di amarmi, ma con un sorriso

freddo come un'alba di settembre,

come se fossi la suora di San Cupido

nella settimana di astinenza.

Please, amami sul serio!

You say you love; but with a smile

Cold as sunrise in September,

As you were Saint Cupid's nun,

And kept his weeks of Ember.

O love me truly!